22:24
Faizan
Do you enter conversations with a goal, or set of expectations? Do you assume you'll have solutions for your Communication Partners (CPs)? Do you listen carefully to pose the best questions to enable you to fulfill your expectations? Do you assume the responses to your questions provide an accurate representation of the full fact pattern - 'good' data - to base your follow-on questions on? Do you assume your history of similar topics provides a route to an optimal outcome?
If any of the above are true, you're biasing your conversation.
· By entering conversations with assumptions and personal goals,
· and listening according to historic, unconscious, self-directed filters,
· you unwittingly direct conversations
· to your range of expectations and familiarity
· and potentially miss a more optimal outcome.
In other words, your unconscious inhibits and biases optimal results. But it's not your fault.
OUR BRAINS CAUSE A GAP BETWEEN WHAT'S SAID AND WHAT'S HEARD
The most surprising takeaway from my year of research for my book on closing the gap between what's said and what's heard was learning how little of what we think we hear is unbiased, or even accurate. Indeed, it's pretty rare for us to hear precisely what another intends us to hear. Yet that doesn't stop us from translating what's said into what we want to hear.
Employing biases, assumptions, triggers, memory tricks, and habit (filters that act as information sieves) our brains take a habitual route when listening to others, alter and omit at will, and don't even tell us what's been transformed, regardless of our desire to be neutral. So the Other might say ABC and our brains actually tell us they said ABL. I once lost a business partner because he 'heard' me say X when three of us confirmed I said Y. "I was right here! Why are you all lying to me! I KNOW she said that!" And he walked out in a self-generated rage.
Indeed, as outsiders, we cannot ever know the full range of givens within our CPs innermost thinking. Every person, every situation, every conversation is unique. And given variances in our beliefs/values, background, identity, etc., our inability to accurately hear exactly what is intended causes us to unintentionally end up working with data of unknowable accuracy, causing a restricted, speculative route to understanding or success.
Net net, we unwittingly base our conversation, goals, questions, intuitive responses and offerings on an assumption of what we think has been said, and we fully succeed only with those whose biases match our own.
ENTERING CONVERSATIONS WITHOUT BIAS
The problem is compounded when we enter and continue conversations with unconscious biases that further restrict possibility. Because of the potential constraints, we must take extra care to enter and guide conversations without bias. But our natural listening habits make that difficult:
1. by biasing the framework of the conversation to the goals we wish to achieve, we overlook alternative, congruent outcomes. Sellers, coaches, leaders, and managers often enter conversations with expectations and goals rather than collaboratively setting a viable frame and together discovering possibility.
2. by listening only for what we're (consciously or unconsciously) focused on hearing, we overlook a broader range of possible outcomes. Sellers, negotiators, leaders, help desk professionals, and coaches often listen for what they want to hear so they can say what they want/are trained to say, or pose biased questions, and possibly miss real opportunities to promote agreement.
If any of the above are true, you're biasing your conversation.
· By entering conversations with assumptions and personal goals,
· and listening according to historic, unconscious, self-directed filters,
· you unwittingly direct conversations
· to your range of expectations and familiarity
· and potentially miss a more optimal outcome.
In other words, your unconscious inhibits and biases optimal results. But it's not your fault.
OUR BRAINS CAUSE A GAP BETWEEN WHAT'S SAID AND WHAT'S HEARD
The most surprising takeaway from my year of research for my book on closing the gap between what's said and what's heard was learning how little of what we think we hear is unbiased, or even accurate. Indeed, it's pretty rare for us to hear precisely what another intends us to hear. Yet that doesn't stop us from translating what's said into what we want to hear.
Employing biases, assumptions, triggers, memory tricks, and habit (filters that act as information sieves) our brains take a habitual route when listening to others, alter and omit at will, and don't even tell us what's been transformed, regardless of our desire to be neutral. So the Other might say ABC and our brains actually tell us they said ABL. I once lost a business partner because he 'heard' me say X when three of us confirmed I said Y. "I was right here! Why are you all lying to me! I KNOW she said that!" And he walked out in a self-generated rage.
Indeed, as outsiders, we cannot ever know the full range of givens within our CPs innermost thinking. Every person, every situation, every conversation is unique. And given variances in our beliefs/values, background, identity, etc., our inability to accurately hear exactly what is intended causes us to unintentionally end up working with data of unknowable accuracy, causing a restricted, speculative route to understanding or success.
Net net, we unwittingly base our conversation, goals, questions, intuitive responses and offerings on an assumption of what we think has been said, and we fully succeed only with those whose biases match our own.
ENTERING CONVERSATIONS WITHOUT BIAS
The problem is compounded when we enter and continue conversations with unconscious biases that further restrict possibility. Because of the potential constraints, we must take extra care to enter and guide conversations without bias. But our natural listening habits make that difficult:
1. by biasing the framework of the conversation to the goals we wish to achieve, we overlook alternative, congruent outcomes. Sellers, coaches, leaders, and managers often enter conversations with expectations and goals rather than collaboratively setting a viable frame and together discovering possibility.
2. by listening only for what we're (consciously or unconsciously) focused on hearing, we overlook a broader range of possible outcomes. Sellers, negotiators, leaders, help desk professionals, and coaches often listen for what they want to hear so they can say what they want/are trained to say, or pose biased questions, and possibly miss real opportunities to promote agreement.
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